Copying files between two Debian Servers using php

Question

My php website is hosted in Debain Machine and I want to move a file from that Machine to another Debain which is connected through VPN.

I tried shell_exec and scp , as mentioned here.

<?php
    $output = shell_exec('scp file1.txt dvader@deathstar.com:somedir');
    echo "<pre>$output</pre>";
?>

I also tried using SFTP

<?php

class SFTPConnection
{
    private $connection;
    private $sftp;

    public function __construct($host, $port=22)
    {
        $this->connection = @ssh2_connect($host, $port);
        if (! $this->connection)
            throw new Exception("Could not connect to $host on port $port.");
    }

    public function login($username, $password)
    {
        if (! @ssh2_auth_password($this->connection, $username, $password))
            throw new Exception("Could not authenticate with username $username " .
                                "and password $password.");

        $this->sftp = @ssh2_sftp($this->connection);
        if (! $this->sftp)
            throw new Exception("Could not initialize SFTP subsystem.");
    }

    public function uploadFile($local_file, $remote_file)
    {
        $sftp = $this->sftp;
        $stream = @fopen("ssh2.sftp://$sftp$remote_file", 'w');

        if (! $stream)
            throw new Exception("Could not open file: $remote_file");

        $data_to_send = @file_get_contents($local_file);
        if ($data_to_send === false)
            throw new Exception("Could not open local file: $local_file.");

        if (@fwrite($stream, $data_to_send) === false)
            throw new Exception("Could not send data from file: $local_file.");

        @fclose($stream);
    }
}

try
{
    $sftp = new SFTPConnection("localhost", 22);
    $sftp->login("username", "password");
    $sftp->uploadFile("/tmp/to_be_sent", "/tmp/to_be_received");
}
catch (Exception $e)
{
    echo $e->getMessage() . "\n";
}

?>

Simply My problem is that I am not able to move a file from one machine, where my php applicaton is working , to another machine which is connected through VPN.

what didn't work? Are there any (error) logs? How are the services (ssh/ftp) configured? Are the servers even able to 'see' (ping) eachother? Did you try executing the commands (scp for example) directly on the server without PHP/apache in between? — Steffen Winkler, May 29 '15 at 11:51
@SteffenWinkler both can ping each other successfully. Yes I executed scp -r /tempFolder/ root@xxx.xxx.xx.xxx:/usr/local/ and it worked. What didn't worked? Files not transfered. Error: A blank page. I double crossed that error reporting is set to display error — Mishra Shreyanshu, May 29 '15 at 12:00

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 01 '15 at 07:52

I installed proftpd and created a user as mentioned here,

Please note default port is 21. And make sure you restart proftpd:

service proftpd restart

The code I used to upload a file is:

index.php

<?php
ini_set('display_errors',1);
ini_set('display_startup_errors',1);
error_reporting(-1);
$file = 'a.txt';
$remote_file = 'b.txt';
$conn_id = ftp_connect('www.xxx.com',21);
$login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, "username","password");
if (ftp_put($conn_id, $remote_file, $file, FTP_ASCII)) {
 echo "successfully uploaded $file\n";
} else {
 echo "There was a problem while uploading $file\n";
 die();
}
ftp_close($conn_id);
?>

Here a.txt is present in the same directory of index.php.

It will copy the file to the folder you mentioned for that particular user to access and name it b.txt.

Copying files between two Debian Servers using php

1 Answers1